The Zennist

Meditation and rebirth

Western Buddhism appears to have no real understanding of how important vijñāna (S.) viññāṇa (P.), normally rendered by ‘consciousness’ plays, both in meditation and rebirth.  This consciousness is samsaric consciousness that survives death; which is the transmigrant.  It re-enters womb after womb.

“It was said: ‘With consciousness as condition there is mentality-materiality.’

How that is so, Ānanda, should be understood in this way: If consciousness were not to descend into the mother’s womb, would mentality-materiality take shape in the womb?”

“Certainly not, venerable sir.” (Mahānidāna Sutta DN 15).

This same consciousness is in the intermediate state between death and the next birth which in Pali is antara and in Tibetan the all familiar bardo from The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo Thodol) by Walter Evans-Wentz.

In spiritual training, meditation known as jhāna (P.) and dhyāna (S.) is the personal means for transcending samsaric consciousness; to have direct gnosis of nirvana, itself.  Meditation is thus the only way to overcome and prevent consciousness from anchoring itself into another womb after death which is why meditation plays such an important role in Buddhism. 

This consciousness has a number of subtle levels or states that have to be transcended and overcome before final deliverance or nirvana is attained.  This is what meditation has to accomplish to realize the state of Buddhahood. 

Based upon his own enlightenment, the Buddha found that this kind of meditation is the only way the continuity and flow (sota) of consciousness can be stopped.  It is the state in which all conceptual and empirical experience comes to a sudden halt (P., saññā-vedayita-nirodha); which ties into the third noble truth which is the attainment of stopping (nirodha samapatti).  This is what in Zen is meant by no-thought or no-mentation which, I dare say, has been overlooked these days.

What is worth noting about the state in which all conceptual and empirical experience comes to a sudden halt is that in the Pali canon this attainment or samapatti is only attainable by non-returners (anāgāmi) and Buddhas.  Some regard it as the ninth meditation.

Not wishing to oversimplify Buddhist meditation but like putting many different pieces of a puzzle together meditation (jhāna/dhyāna) is about transcending samsaric consciousness which the Buddha also says is like a magician’s illusion, in addition, to also saying that “suffering is caused by consciousness” (Sutta Nipata, 734) since consciousness has managed to anchor itself, again, in conditioned existence, in a womb, for example.

Who was the Buddha?

Buddha is a name given to a person who has awakened to the absolute which is transcendent.  The word ‘Buddha’ is a passive past participle which is derived from the root budh which can mean to wake up, awake, rise from sleep, to come to one's senses, to revive, restore to life, etc.

Gotama (S., Gautama) was given the name Buddha because he had realized ultimate reality or we could say because he had attained enlightenment.  However, he did not call himself the Buddha.  He generally called himself the Tathāgata (the true state or real nature). His followers called him Bhagavat, meaning the blessed one.  He said he was the supreme teacher, one who has attained the most perfect awakening.  He also said:

“Brahmin, I have abandoned those taints because of which I might have become a deva; I have cut them off at the root, made them like palm stumps, obliterated them so that they are no longer subject to future arising. (2) I have abandoned those taints because of which I might have become a gandhabba … (3) … might have become a yakkha … (4) … might have become a human being; I have cut them off at the root, made them like palm stumps, obliterated them so that they are no longer subject to future arising. Just as a blue, red, or white lotus flower, though born in the water and grown up in the water, rises above the water and stands unsoiled by the water, even so, though born in the world and grown up in the world, I have overcome the world and dwell unsoiled by the world. Remember me, brahmin, as a Buddha. (A. ii. 38-39).

Buddhists today look upon the Buddha as not being much different from themselves.  Secular Buddhists, especially, don’t consider Gotama’s realization to be uncommon or superhuman. 

Yes, modern Buddhists are right in one respect, the Buddha looked like any ordinary person in the India of that time, just like Einstein looked like some common, ordinary person.  But this is where the comparison stops — at the external form.  Becoming a Buddha or awakening is not the transformation of the conditioned, carnal person.  In fact, the carnal person is old karma.  A Buddha has realized that which is beyond karma.  Being a Buddha is a spiritual transformation, in other words.  It’s looking at the world sub specie aeternitatis, i.e., in its essential nature.  This is the overcoming of the soiled human world—humans judging themselves which is only relative knowledge.

Who is hijacking Buddhism?

Odd title for this blog?  Having been on the Internet even before Netscape came onto the scene I have witnessed the gradual hijacking of Buddhism by those who can be called the “ideologically possessed” a term, to the best of my knowledge, that was introduced by the Canadian professor of psychology, Jordan Peterson.

I shall start off this blog with first nailing down what I mean by ideology.  So here goes. 

First it is important to keep in mind that ideology is one of the more slippery, eel-like concepts that has become part of our everyday language.  Ideology, itself, is non-rational insofar as its authority, that is, the justification for any idea it has, is based on physical sensations.  This, I stress, is at the heart of ideology which was originated by Antoine Destutt de Tracy in 1797.

The ideologist, we can say, is one who fabricates ideal schemes or narratives which are really transformed sensations or feelings which then become quasi facts, although still fictions.  These sensations constitute the empirical source—not the actual fact itself (the so-called 9/11 event demonstrates the conflict between ideology with its quasi facts and actual facts).

The one who is ideologically possessed (the extreme ideologist) is driven by their ideology, who is urgently desirous of having their way which can lead to outright hostility if not fanaticism, the worst kind being terrorism.

A growing number of Buddhists, I have come across over the years, direct their practice to becoming engaged with political issues which are ideologically driven such as diversity and inclusion which, truth be told, is about hijacking Buddhism (redoing its major principles); using it for identity politics which is about a struggle for political voice by certain marginalized groups.   

What you see on the current issue of tricycle, a Buddhist journal, is an article titled Dharma For All.  It speaks ideologically.  It is a fictional narrative the intention of which is to move the reader's feelings.  But it remains non-rational and ideological, nevertheless.  To be sure, it is not Buddhism whose sole purpose is to reach nirvana by dhyāna, thereby escaping rebirth into samsara. 

Buddhism, as I see it, is being hijacked to help give credence to ideologic things like identity politics which is more about a quest for power in which persons are scripted who then become actors (the group) within a narrative but also become fanatical ideologists.

 

We are trapped in the world of consciousness

If the meditation we engage in on a daily basis has taught us one thing is that the subject is always facing a world of objects from the most subtle and sublime thought-constructs, including sublime emotional feelings, to what our senses behold out there in the big city where we work and play. 

We, the hidden subject, are always facing an object-world.  Here is the important part: we know nothing about the subject except to explain it by constructing various thoughts about it which fall within the object-world.  Just a reminder, our thoughts and concepts are still objects, albeit, very fine and subtle objects.  They are not the subject.

The ironclad rule is this, the object (even thought) cannot see, grasp, or realize the subject.

The subject is primary for us.  It is who we really are.  It has always been before all objective conditions, all of which are secondary to it.  But the subject is also in a state of avidya meaning that it is ignorant of itself—unawakened.  It is also formational (saṃskāra) so that it becomes indirectly conscious of itself, as subject, but only through facing a world of objects which are its configurations (but never actually itself).  We experience this in meditation when our thoughts and feelings arise in front of us, the subject.

We believe we can find our self by making our way into the object-world assuming that the subject is a special kind of object!  This is our delusions taking charge.  Now we are trapped in the world of consciousness (vijñāna: subject-object knowing) in which all objects are related to the subject while, at the same time, the subject hopes to see itself as an object (a vicious circle).  This is the real source of suffering according to the Buddha who said, “Whatever suffering arises in the world, all is caused by consciousness” (Sutta Nipata 734).

To repeat myself from older blogs, it is only by the instantaneous removal of the objects (the conditioned) that the subject (which is unconditioned) is revealed.  Another way to look at it is the pure subject meets the pure object.  Difference disappears, the original one or the most primary is revealed.  This is our Buddha-nature.